WHEN I moved back to Salisbury recently, I breathed again.

I was born and raised here but I’ve spent the last 15 years in London, and although there is no comparison in the diversity and opportunity of our incredible capital, not once did I ever feel like pausing to enjoy a deep lungful of air there.

A stroll along the South Bank will blow the cobwebs away, and the fresh water lido on Tooting Common is a quirky - and bracing – delight.

However, after enjoying one of London’s picturesque green areas, I - like most other Londoners - would return to my tiny flat with no garden on the outskirts of the urban sprawl.

It was great to visit these places, but to me it felt like opening a box of sunshine at your desk for quarter of an hour, or taking a quick whiff of bottled country air on the train. A quick fix, but no comparison to the real thing.

I worked as a magazine journalist so it was an exciting and wildly-varying life, but still my days began underground, pressed into a tube carriage with hundreds of others like a mould of terrine.

Everyone trying to pack two lives into one - eating breakfast in someone else’s armpit; or tarring lashes with mascara while clinging to a pole.

Most days were then spent under the unnatural make-up-stripping light that makes you wonder how people ever find others attractive enough to have office affairs, and then once I was spat out at the end of the day like chewed gum, it was off to a bar or gym, and then home to the tiny flat.

London is exciting, varied and vibrant, and the perfect place for me in my twenties and early thirties, but once a country girl always a country girl.

When I started writing my first book I moved back to Salisbury. Since then I frequently find myself taking lots of deep breaths, and it feels nice.

Here the air is fresh, and the countryside is all around - not a tube journey away to be enjoyed for a few hours before heading home.

Some of my favourite things in Salisbury haven’t changed since I’ve been away, but there are inevitably others that have.

Some for the better, and others not so much - but that’s another story…